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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195535">that which resembles the grave but isn't!</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta'>clarinetta</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Beatles (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1970, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Post-Break Up, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, i guess kinda</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:47:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,658</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195535</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul can’t get over the sensation that there are two entirely separate sets of people in the same place. One set is their physical bodies in the room, where Ringo is talking and Paul is sitting on the bed and George is watching silently and John is looking crestfallen. The other set is just four beings of consciousness, trying to communicate like they used to, through thought and through imagined bars of music, notes snatched from the ether and knocked together, or stacked on top of each other, or spread out on the floor like old photographs.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>George Harrison &amp; John Lennon &amp; Paul McCartney &amp; Ringo Starr, George Harrison &amp; Paul McCartney, John Lennon &amp; Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney &amp; Ringo Starr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>105</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>that which resembles the grave but isn't!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A "what if the break-up but EVEN WORSE" AU constructed and discussed with pivoinesque and savageandwise several years ago in which we speculated what would have happened if Linda wasn't in the picture somehow post-68. Someone asked, what if Paul had fallen for the trap Klein and the other three tried to set for him in late 1970? And then this was born, another in my unofficial series of "what if they literally had no other choice but to talk about their feelings" fics. This fic was started in 2017 and abandoned but now it is finally finished and out of my system.</p><p>I cannot stress enough how explicitly dark this is. It is about a suicide attempt and trying to reconnect with people afterward. There are graphic descriptions. Do Not Read If This Will Upset You.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[1967: Paul McCartney met Linda Eastman at a party. She photographed him sitting alone, smoking nervously. He looked nervous because that’s what he was, and she was an honest photographer. She slipped him her number and he kept it.</p><p>May 1968: Linda came to Paul and John’s Apple press conference in New York. She and Paul reconnected and spent a weekend together. John was furious and got together with Yoko soon after.</p><p>December 1968: Linda decided she’d had enough of Paul and his constant drinking and coke habit. She took her daughter and left on a frigid Sunday morning, and the bright morning sun over the fading frost made everything seem colder.</p><p>1969: The band disintegrated, a horrible slow-motion chemical reaction of pain and miscommunication. Paul went from girl to girl in almost desperate fashion, getting in way too deep immediately and shedding them like skins just as quickly, or they shed him. John asked for a divorce. John, George, and Ringo wanted Allen Klein to manage things, but Paul believed him a fraud, someone who could not be trusted. He picked up his own lawyer on referral, a far out young man who meant well but tumbled headlong into heroin in 1970 and never managed to crawl back out again. They fell out and Paul sank deep into himself, spending weeks alone in his house, refusing to answer his phone or his front door, speaking to no one.</p><p>October 1970: Close to John’s birthday, John called Paul, a phone call which Paul had only picked up on a whim; John spoke for once in a conciliatory tone instead of a nasty one, and Paul fell for it. John said come over, Paul. He said <em>We’re making a record for Ringo.</em> He said <em>Come on, Macca, it’ll be like the old days, just the four of us making a record for Ringo, it’s for Ringo, don’t you want to help dear Richie out.</em> He said <em>I promise</em> and it sounded like the truth.</p><p>On October 3rd, 1970, Paul showed up to the session, freshly shaven, simultaneously sober and out of bed for the first time in months.]</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Paul, I’m sorry.”</p><p>”What for, Rich?” Paul says absently, re-tuning his bass for the next take. “Did you fluff the tempo change? Sounded all right to me.”</p><p>“No, it…” and Ringo sounds so stricken that Paul turns and looks at him over his drum kit. Ringo won’t meet his eyes; he is instead looking through shaggy fringe between George and John, who eye him back with warnings writ large on their faces. Paul finds himself suddenly aware of an entirely different, and entirely silent, conversation going on over his head. He busies himself with his bass and waits for them to emerge from their shared silent space, resolutely <em>not</em> thinking about the fact that he used to occupy that space with them and here is proof that he does not anymore. He twists a knob blindly, tightening god-knows-what string to the point of almost snapping.</p><p>The wordless conversation stretches on and on. Eventually Paul clears his throat. “Then what, Rich?”</p><p>“Allen said...” Paul’s hands seize around the neck of his bass at the name. “Well, he said to get you to record with us. Said you couldn’t sue us if you’d been recording with us, y’know.”</p><p><em>Entrapment,</em> Paul thinks, and no word has ever felt so heavy. Paul looks into the eyes of his former friend. Ringo’s gaze slides away, proclaiming the truth of it, declaring his shame. Suddenly everything feels immediate and achingly, screamingly present; colors are far too bright, the yellow of John’s shirt is hurting Paul’s eyes. Every squeak of someone’s shoe sounds like a bomb going off inside of Paul’s ear. It is as though some essential curtain which had been hiding the true nature of his friends’ hatred has been parted, finally, slashed through with Ringo’s brutal honest knife. Ringo was the one who said it, but he seems to speak for the other two as well; John’s head is bowed, avoiding, avoiding, as he does so often, and George’s sunken cheeks are aflame. All four of them stand in mutual shame, united for one last moment, and there is a silence so total and profound that Paul fancies he can subconsciously hear all of their hearts beating double time.</p><p>Eventually, the silence breaks. “It was the only—” George starts, then sighs. “We couldn’t think of anything else to <em>do,</em> y’know. We had to, we couldn’t let you—I mean, you couldn’t—Don’t look like that, Paul, we only—”</p><p>“Shut up, George,” John’s harsh voice cuts through. “He fell for it, y’know. And that’s that.”</p><p>“Well I <em>know,</em> but—”</p><p>“It’s nothing,” Paul finds himself saying. His voice sounds like him, but not present-day him; it sounds like Paul before his growth spurt at fourteen, baby-Paul, high and reedy and small. “It’s all right, really—”</p><p>“We can finish the song if you—”</p><p>“No, I think, I really, I must be, I have to go anyway, you know.” Paul speaks airily, with hardly a thought given to the words he’s saying, almost breathless with the need to get away. The thought of continuing this pretense chokes him; he wonders briefly whether they’d planned to even put out the song after the session and discovers, to his horror, that he doesn’t know. These people he’s known for years feel totally alien to him now, inscrutable, capable of anything. Still carrying his bass by the neck, he turns on his heel and walks out, ignoring the voices half-heartedly pleading with him to stay.</p><p>He walks home to Cavendish along a blessedly empty street. That brightness and immediacy he sensed in the studio follows him, only now it’s been turn inward on himself; he can feel every system, stark, outlined against one another, blood and nerve ending and organ and muscle and fat and skin, all terribly, terribly alive, somehow. He imagines a spot of rot in the marrow of one bone, or a bullet wound left torn open and unhealed; imagines the rot spreading, moldy fingers splaying out into the blood and further until his hands starts to turn black, fingernails chipped and torn, skin flaking away in sloughs, in layers. <em>You’ve got music in your blood, son,</em> he remembers his dad saying once. Whatever music was there turns to bitter vinegar and he feels every beat of his heart as it pushes the poisoned blood through his arteries. The necrosis crawls up his arms, over his lips.</p><p>Paul drops his violin bass; the beautiful wood thumps hollowly in the grass, jangled sounds of abandoned strings. It is an aborted A minor chord snatched out of the air and smashed on the ground. He leaves it for the beetles.</p><p>Inside Cavendish, the sound of his treacherous heart is magnified tenfold, now banging valiantly, almost defiantly, trying to keep him alive. Every beat is another second he has overstayed his welcome. He feels like an unwanted guest in his own house, excess fat to be sliced off the meat with a grimace of disgust. <em>Caught, I’m caught, I’m caught,</em> he screams in his head, over and over, until his hands bury themselves in his hair, clutching and pulling, trying to reach in and claw the thought out of his mind.</p><p>The instruments he has collected over the years are resting in the music room upstairs. They do not wake at his presence but slumber on like curled cats in the sun as Paul steps into the room. That immediacy, the bell-rung clarity again: each instrument shines golden with its own beauty, its own history. They require care and reverence, and they wait patiently to be held and caressed again. Instead Paul murders them in their sleep. Tears out their throats, cuts their veins, snaps their bones. They bleed shreds of music all over him and die in pain.</p><p>After the massacre upstairs, his hands are the only instruments left. He realizes, dimly, in a faraway corner of his mind, that he is about to kill himself. The cliff approaches at terminal velocity and the rational voice is nothing against the howling purity of his need to end this unbearable feeling. He grabs a knife from the kitchen, and, hesitating only a split second, severs the lifelines in one wrist, then the other. Old dying music sludges down over his fingers and spills onto the floor, a cleansing flood of red relief. <em>It’s over, you’re free,</em> it sings, and he closes his eyes, thankful.</p><p>There is no sound at all.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The unmistakably dry, sterile air of a hospital burns his nose as soon as he begins to wake. He squirms against uncomfortable sheets, an involuntary reaction, a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage; and then he remembers what happened, and his heart stops.</p><p>(Well, no. His heart keeps beating, stubborn to the last. Marching him forward when all he wants to do is lie down and <em>end.</em>)</p><p>Reluctantly, lashes sticking and pulling, he opens his eyes. He notices first that he is alone in the hospital room, a small comfort. Someone in a policeman’s hat stands outside the closed door, likely a guard, his outline dark through the glass window. The room is sparse and unfurnished except for two plastic chairs off to the side and a small nightstand to his right. Unknowable machines beep their strange beeps on his left side, and a needle has been inserted into the crook of his left elbow, neatly taped down and hooked to a bag of unidentified clear liquid. There are no flowers on the windowsill, and he thanks a God he doesn’t believe in. No flowers means no one knows.</p><p>Finally he turns his eyes downward and looks himself over. His clothes have been replaced with a thin, ugly hospital gown that reminds him of his mother. There is about a day’s worth of stubble on his face, and it itches. He tries to reach up and scratch and finds both wrists captive. Looking down, he sees white gauze, wrapped tight, covering the cuts he barely remembers making. Clasped also around both of his wrists, already starting to chafe against the base of his palms, are a pair of restraints strapping him to the bed railings.</p><p>He exhales roughly. Stares at the ceiling for an interminable amount of time, thinking of absolutely nothing. Endless rolls of grey and grey and grey. He gets lost in them, in the nothingness, and dreads being found.</p><p>A nurse visits, checks his heart rate, blood pressure, temperature. She chirps pleasantly at first but stops when he doesn’t respond. She unties the restraints so he can use the restroom; she makes him keep the door open, which under normal circumstances would be humiliating. Today there is no shame. His hands and body are warm wax, pliable at a touch and utterly still when laid back on the starchy pillows. The nurse clucks to herself, mutters something he only half-catches about ordering another transfusion. Her nails are bright red (<em>the color my baby wore;</em> Paul thinks he should feel a pang of sadness, regret, longing, <em>something</em>—but it doesn’t come). She checks the IV snaking into his left arm. Her breasts brush his chest as she leans over the bed and Paul feels nothing, nothing, nothing. She leaves and Paul barely notices.</p><p>A very short amount of time later, too short, another person knocks and enters, this time a nervous looking, underfed male doctor with a white surgical mask and dark hair spilling every which way. His lab coat hangs awkwardly on his shoulders as though thrown on in haste, the stethoscope crooked, too big for the neck it hangs on. Seeming unsure of himself, the man darts familiar eyes quick to Paul’s face and away as though testing the emotional weather there. Just as he has done ever since Paul first took him under his stupid fat wing on the bus to school.</p><p>“Hello, George.”</p><p>His own voice sounds like vast empty rooms, all echoes and shadows and cobwebs in the corners. George flinches visibly. Clearly, he had not expected Paul to be awake.</p><p>Gathering all of his bravery in one breath, he turns fully toward Paul and walks up to the edge of the bed, just inches from Paul’s right hand. That is as far as his courage takes him before it sputters out and leaves George stranded. Paul watches him with vague disinterest. George watches Paul, too, out of the corners of his eyes, unable to fix his gaze on any one thing for too long. After a long moment, Paul lying captive and George standing above him like an angel uncertain of his duties, George raises one hand and slips the mask down. He closes his eyes and begins to chant under his breath. <em>Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Krishna Krishna. Hare Hare.</em></p><p>Laughter slices Paul’s throat, unexpected. He sounds like he is coughing up pieces of glass but he cannot stop, even after George stops chanting, wide-eyed with fear, even after George runs out of the room unable to pretend he is doing anything other than retreating, his stethoscope sent flying, even after there is nothing left to laugh at, which of course, there never was in the first place, but still he cannot stop laughing until another nurse hurries in and injects something into his IV that sends him drifting away on those oceans of rolling infinite grey, still chuckling mercilessly.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The sedation wears off sometime in the middle of the night, and he struggles awake in the dark. The door is closed, but a familiar silhouette stands in profile behind the glass window–his father, looking fierce and absolutely livid. After a moment Paul realizes he is arguing with someone out of sight.</p><p>“I said no,” Jim McCartney says sternly.</p><p>“Fuck you.” John Lennon’s voice scrapes unmistakably against Paul’s consciousness. “We’re his family!”</p><p>“Are ya?” Jim says, incredulous. “Haven’t been acting much like it, ‘ave you?”</p><p>“What has he told you?” John demands.</p><p>“Enough.”</p><p>John steps closer, gets right into Jim’s face where Paul can see him. It makes Paul’s breath stutter. John’s long nose flares in rage. Jim stands his ground, arms crossed over his chest. He only reaches John’s cheekbone at full height, but he is planted like a wise old tree in front of the door. He eyes John steadily, and though John does not move back, something in his posture looks cowed and a bit frightened of the old man, who has lived through two wars and looks to be ready for another. Jim has never been afraid of John Lennon. (Unlike Paul, who discovers that he has begun to tremble, causing the metal clasps of his restraints to rattle slightly.)</p><p>“Mr. McCartney,” George’s voice, unsteady, carries over whatever muttering John is doing (<em>Oh, God, they’re all here,</em> Paul thinks, shaking harder). He steps forward to stand next to John, his posture one of supplication rather than aggression. “We didn’t know it was—We didn’t <em>know</em>—”</p><p>“And you,” Jim interrupts, turns disdainful eyes toward George, who bows his head. “You would dare sneak in to see him after everything, after what you’ve done. They had to sedate him after you left. You should be ashamed, young man.”</p><p>Someone out of Paul’s sight line puts one hand on John’s shoulder and one hand on George’s upper arm. A low voice murmurs soothingly; Ringo, with his infinite calm and warmth. John steps back a bit. Ringo continues, too low to make out individual words, but the tone is pleading, directed at Jim, who relaxes minutely.</p><p>“Well, you cannae talk to him, y’know. He’s still sleeping.”</p><p>It sounds like defeat, and so it is. John and Ringo and George murmur their promises to be quiet as mice, and Paul knows it’s just a matter of minutes before Jim gives in. He concentrates hard on controlling the shakes that insist on rippling through him when he hears their voices. Tries to steady his wild unfathomable heart. He is unprepared for this, will never be prepared for this—he is here, fucking handcuffed to a hospital bed because he wanted to get away from them, wanted them to never have to see him again. He’d wanted to give them, ultimately, what he knew they <em>really</em> desired, below all the maneuvering and trying to keep him on the label—Paul McCartney, gone. He was an animal stuck in their trap, and he gnawed off his limbs to get away. Now they’ve caught him, <em>again.</em></p><p>The doorknob turns. Paul takes a deep stuttering breath and exhales. Closing his eyes, letting his head fall limp to one side, he does his best impression of someone still sleeping under sedation.</p><p>Soft shuffling footsteps as his former bandmates file into the room. Nothing like the clip-clop of the heeled boots they used to wear when they were a four-headed monster taking on the world together, but he recognizes every set of footsteps just the same, each of them unique as a fingerprint. It strikes Paul in that moment that running away from them was always going to be futile. They’d been lashed to each other with chains too thick to sever, for better or worse. The room seems drained of air. He struggles to breathe steadily.</p><p>“Cor,” Ringo whispers on an exhale.</p><p>“I told ya,” George murmurs, his voice on the edge of total collapse.</p><p>Someone stumbles backward. The sound of John throwing up into a bin in the corner takes Paul back and back, to 1958 when John’s binge drinking had hit a peak and the soundtrack to most of Paul’s nights was John’s sick hitting the pavement, outside some bar or other, muted shouts and laughter and a rock-n-roll band finishing their set. Against his will, against everything that had been said and done, Paul’s hands itch to comfort, provide support. Instead he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing calm and tries not to listen.</p><p>A warm hand wraps itself around his arm, carefully avoiding the gauze. Ringo’s warm cinnamon scent fills Paul with a brokenhearted longing he thought he would never experience again. Everything about Ringo is warm; his hands, his smell, his smile. Paul wants to bask in it again, to feel the comforting kiss on the top of his head that Ringo gave him once in a quiet moment. But the image of Ringo standing with the others looms larger; the chilly sound of his useless apology for their betrayal still echoes, blotting out everything else.</p><p>A drop of something wet hits Paul’s arm and slips over the curve, into the crook of his elbow. Ringo sniffles.</p><p>“Does anyone know?” John asks, apparently recovered.</p><p>“Official word is that he was in a car accident,” Jim responds.</p><p>“We <em>know</em> that,” John says testily. “But is anyone asking questions?”</p><p>“The usual, reporters trying to get in,” Jim answers. “The police and doctors have been grand, not a word spoken so far. It’s just the usual conspiracy people, you know the ones.” Contempt drips from every syllable. “The ones what think he’s dead and all.”</p><p>John shuffles forward and hovers over Paul, smelling of bile and Yoko’s perfume. He touches cold fingers to the side of Paul’s neck. Paul fights to keep still, keep playing at sleep. He hopes John cannot sense how quickly his heart his racing. Racing to beat the band.</p><p>Taking his fingers away, John announces, “Still kickin’, our Paul.”</p><p>“He’s not your Paul, is he,” Jim says, and his voice is hard flint again. “You forfeited that right.”</p><p>No one replies.</p><p>“I think it’s time you boys went home,” Jim says. No one fights him this time. They file out, those familiar shuffling footfalls. Paul watches their retreating backs through his lashes. Blessedly, Jim walks out with them and closes the door behind him. As soon as the latch snicks shut, Paul releases a long-held breath, dizzy with relief.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Paul dreams of flying. He holds his arms out for ages, but they don’t get tired. The others are flying with him, mirroring his movements as he mirrors theirs. John dips forward and swoops; Paul, George, and Ringo swoop along after him. Paul turns on his back and flies backward, hands resting behind his head; the others do the same. They are all perfectly in sync, each one a shadow of the other, sewn together with careful stitches. Paul glances behind and sees a sea of people flying after them, following the four-pointed star of the Beatles straight on till morning.</p><p>He looks forward again, a bit uneasy. The others feel it, too. Then John looks over at Paul, and his faces changes into something with an evil smile and hatred in his eyes. He grabs the threads tying them together and yanks them out, rips holes in Paul’s skin, and Paul falls. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They take away the restraints the next day, with promises from Jim that he won’t leave Paul alone. Paul feels Jim’s eyes on him as the nurse goes through her routine of checking vitals before leaving them alone. He senses one of his dad’s Talks coming on and wishes the nurse would sedate him again.</p><p>The silence is a third person in the room. Paul tries to shrink into the pillow under his father’s stare. He is finding it hard to breathe, his cheeks flaring with shame. It is the first moment he truly confronts what he has done, faced eye to eye with someone who would have lost him. The fresh gauze rubs and constricts uncomfortably around the stitches, which he still has not been able to look at. He realizes he still does not know how he survived, or who found him. He hopes the sight wasn’t too bad. He can’t imagine how disgusted Jim must be with him, for being so weak and stupid. He feels every inch a failure, the Beatles’ accomplishments looking dim indeed in the harsh light of the mistakes he’s made. Jim sighs, sets aside his pipe.</p><p>“Da,” Paul says, his voice shuddering low in his chest.</p><p>“Hush.” Jim walks over to the bed. He sits on the edge of the bed, grabs Paul by the shoulders and pulls him into a crushing hug.</p><p>Paul breaks like a wave. Everything comes out, every individual insecurity and every terrible fight and every person he let down or felt let down by. He rambles about his poor lawyer heading off the deep end and worrying about John going the same route. He dances around the subject of Yoko but he can still feel her presence, a black shroud over each of his words. Shaking till his teeth rattle, he bites out an abridged version of how he got here; the drinking, the rows with the other Beatles, his slow-motion collapse into a mental black hole of uselessness and failure. Through it all, Jim listens and pats his hand whenever Paul stops gesturing long enough. </p><p>By the end of it, his voice near collapse, face a teary mess, his sentences begin to bleed into each other in an almost incomprehensible jumble. “It’s like they... they poisoned it, everything we... and they won’t let me <em>go,</em> I mean, I poisoned it too and I probably deserve whatever they... But I was just, all I wanted to do was break it clean, y’know, I tried and I tried to give them what they <em>really</em> wanted, they didn’t want to work together anymore, John asked for a divorce, so I... and now Klein’s in, tellin’ them I have to stay on the label, and I can’t get out of it now, Hare fucking Krishna or whatever it was George said, and they don’t really want me there anyway, not really, so... So what use am I? What <em>good?</em> I just... I dunno, I can’t, I can’t do this, anymore, I don’t think I can.”</p><p>“Oh, son,” Jim sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Paul, of course, has no answer. He shrugs helplessly, runs shaking fingers through his hair, over and over and over.</p><p>“I wasn’t thinkin’, at all, y’know,” he says after a long rattling silence. “I just, I had to get out. Had to.”</p><p>“And now?” Jim asks sharply. “What about how you feel now?”</p><p>Paul shrugs again, suddenly wrung out. “S’pose it doesn’t matter, does it.” Jim’s brow furrows, like he wants to argue, but he doesn’t. “I’m tired,” Paul says, and it isn’t a lie. He feels pinned to a wall like a dead butterfly, his wings and guts splayed out open for all the world to see. Jim nods. He stands and stretches out his back, picks up his pipe from the nightstand. The one hospital-issued pillow sullenly refuses to provide any comfort as Paul lays his head down again.</p><p>“Will you be here?” Paul asks in a small child’s voice as he drifts off.</p><p>“Wouldn’t be anywhere else,” Jim replies around the pipe. Paul nods and closes his eyes. Just before tumbling over the edge of sleep, he hears his father say: “It matters to me, you know. How you feel. It matters to me.”</p><p>Paul dreams of turbulent oceans opening wide mouths and swallowing him whole.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The next day (period of waking? time is different here) begins with a literal bang.</p><p>Paul jerks out of sleep, sitting up before he’s aware of it, head turned toward the sound before his eyes have adjusted to the light. The door to his room hangs ajar, still swinging slightly, as though it has just been thrown open. There appears to be a dent in the wall to the left of it, at approximately doorknob height. Paul blinks.</p><p>“Now, don’t make me arrest you, and don’t think I won’t just because you’re Beatles,” growls an unfamiliar policeman, who stands in the doorway with his feet planted apart. Paul squints past him and sees one angry, familiar face glaring at the cop. His blood turns cold.</p><p>“I don’t give a shit who you’d arrest,” John Lennon spits. “You can’t bloody stop me from seein’ him—”</p><p>“Mr. McCartney senior made very clear arrangements with—”</p><p>“Bugger your arrangements!” And John makes a move, one that Paul recognizes instantly from too many nights watching John get drunk and get violent, and he can’t stop himself from calling out.</p><p>“John, don’t!”</p><p>John stops short of raising his arm and peers over the cop’s shoulder. “He’s awake, then?” George calls from deeper down the corridor. John and Paul lock eyes. For a moment, it is as though the past thirteen years haven’t happened yet. Paul is fifteen again, short and fat and frozen in the high intensity beam of that stare, desperate to prove he is worth something. He straightens his back before realizing just how futile the movement is.</p><p>The cop looks over his shoulder at Paul. He cocks one eyebrow as if to ask, <em>All right if I let these ruffians in?</em> Reluctantly, Paul nods, attempting to the brush the sleep from his eyes.</p><p>The cop steps aside, and George, John and Ringo shove past him. Immediately, John makes for the bed with long aggressive strides, arms out, and before he can register that John wants to hug him, not slap him, Paul instinctively flinches backward, <em>hard</em>. John stops, arms still outstretched, brow furrowed with confusion and hurt.</p><p>“Sorry,” Paul says hurriedly. “Thought you were gonna... hit me, or something.” He laughs uncomfortably. No one joins him. John’s face falls even further. He stands in the middle of the room, arms hanging awkwardly now at his sides, flanked by George and Ringo, who look, despite having almost literally shoved a cop to get in, like they’d rather be anywhere else.</p><p><em>Off to the races,</em> Paul thinks.</p><p>“I wasn’t,” John murmurs.</p><p>Ringo starts talking then, nattering about the latest mad thing Mick and Keith have been up to, and Paul can’t get over the sensation that there are two entirely separate sets of people in the same place. One set is their physical bodies in the room, where Ringo is talking and Paul is sitting on the bed and George is watching silently and John is looking crestfallen. The other set is just four beings of consciousness, trying to communicate like they used to, through thought and through imagined bars of music, notes snatched from the ether and knocked together, or stacked on top of each other, or spread out on the floor like old photographs. John’s consciousness hums <em>I love you,</em> and it sounds like Yesterday. Ringo’s consciousness sings <em>I’m sorry</em> with the chorus from Eleanor Rigby. <em>Ahh, look at all these lonely people</em>. George’s consciousness howls <em>why,</em> the wavering wails from While My Guitar Gently Weeps stretching to reach Paul.</p><p>Paul has lost the ability to sing in this language. But he listens.</p><p>Jim bursts in after only a few moments and kicks them out, utterly fuming, before they have a chance to move past the latest Stones gossip.</p><p>Later that day, a doctor gives Paul a psych evaluation in between bites of a bacon sarnie. He wipes his hand down his shirt front after every bite while Paul answers his questions. Paul stares at the grease stains, trying to keep his lips from curling in disgust. The doctor doesn’t notice. He doesn’t seem to notice much of anything. Paul pulls a face during one answer; he puts on a terrible Cockney accent during another. The man just takes another bite, wipes his hand down his shirt front. Cleans his teeth with a fingernail, writes notes with looping letters. He declares Paul fit to return home almost immediately after Paul answers the last question.</p><p>“Are you planning to harm yourself in the future?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>
  <em>(Didn’t plan it the first time, either.)</em>
</p><p>Getting discharged without being seen is less of a nightmare than it could have been. They bundle him into a coat and hat pulled down low over his eyes, push him around in a wheelchair. There are relatively few laymen hanging around, but there are some reporters sniffing about like sharks out for blood. Paul pretends to be asleep with the hood of his parka covering most of his face, avoids eye contact, and they survive the drive home without even the cabbie noticing who's in his backseat.</p><p>Paul opens the front door of Cavendish and steps inside, Jim on his heels, nearly suffocating Paul with his hovering. It is just as silent as it was before, exposing the sound of his stubborn heart. He glances to the left, toward the kitchen. Jim must see the question in his face, because he sighs and answers before Paul opens his mouth.</p><p>“Mal found you,” he says. “He was here to drop off mail and got worried when you didn’t answer the door. Called the ambulance right away, then called me. He won’t talk about it. I think it knocked him but good. He saved your life.”</p><p>“Where’s Martha?”</p><p>“She’s at mine for the moment. I’ll bring her over later.” There’s an awkward silence. “I’ll make supper,” Jim offers, but Paul shakes his head.</p><p>“I’ll be fine, Da,” he says. “You don’t have to worry. Go on home.” Jim purses his lips and looks ready to argue, but something stops him and he sighs instead. He hugs Paul and takes his leave, promising to bring Martha back after supper.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The grandfather clock in the sitting room ticks, as though waiting to see what Paul will do. He glances toward the kitchen again. <em>Well. Might as well get it over with.</em> He squares his shoulders and walks in, casually, as though nothing had happened.</p><p>The kitchen is pristine, completely spotless. Paul drags in a breath, unsteady and a bit ragged at the edge. He’s not sure what he was expecting: for his father to have left the stains smeared on the floor for him to find? Bloody rags strewn over the tap? Dizzyingly, he flashes for a brief second to the memory; the knife perched precariously on the counter, the sharp point dripping red onto the floor; then the vision clears and he’s back in the present day. </p><p>He opens the drawer and finds the knife missing. All of his knives are missing, in fact. He opens another drawer and discovers that all of his utensils—forks, spoons and all—have been replaced with flimsy plastic cutlery. <em>Fair enough,</em> he thinks begrudgingly; although the lack of trust smarts a little, he has to admit this incident has shaken his faith in himself, in how well he knows himself. He’d thought he was a well-controlled, self-contained, sensible person. Sure, the drinking had gotten somewhat out of hand, but he was entitled to that, wasn’t he, after everything? And he’d never made it anyone else’s problem, always able to contain his issues within his own solid body; unlike John, whose porous skin seeped with pain, spilled his anguish into everything he did and said, infected everyone around him.</p><p>He wrenches his mind away from John and decides he’s going to make tea, a lovely calming ritual. Surely that will set his nerves right.</p><p>Just after he sets the water on the burner, though, the front bell rings.</p><p>
  <em>So much for settled nerves.</em>
</p><p>Paul glances through the frosted glass but can’t tell who’s on the stoop; he can tell, however, that the person doesn’t have any bulky electronic equipment with them, like a camera or a microphone, so he decides it’s probably all right to open the door. When he does, though, he immediately wishes he hadn’t, because Ringo is standing there awkwardly, hands clasped in front. He looks pale, almost naked without the other two flanking him. It’s a strange sight, not least because up until as recently as two years ago, before everything fell apart for good, all four of them lived so deep in each other’s pockets that they often walked into each other’s homes without a thought, snuck in a back way with a special key to skirt past the Scruffs. Paul remembers many late mornings wandering downstairs, still sleep-fuzzy, to find Ringo already in his kitchen making tea, the TV on and turned down low as though he’d been there for some time. Now he waits nervously on the stoop like a passing acquaintance waiting to see if Paul remembers him well enough to let him in.</p><p>Paul clears his throat. They’ve been standing there staring at each other long enough that he hears the kettle start to sing in the kitchen. “Tea’s on,” he offers.</p><p>“Ta,” Ringo says, with visible relief, and follows Paul inside.</p><p>The first evening is painful, long minutes of dead air between them while the television drones on. But Ringo returns almost every day before tea time (Paul suspects that his father has had a chat with him and impressed upon him that it would be less smothering if Ringo checked in instead of Jim) and stays until he has to leave in the evening to record. Ringo knows better than to ask questions about how Paul is feeling, so often he grabs a random record out of Paul’s collection, sets it on the Victrola and just lets it spin. On the second day Ringo brings over a set of paints and a stack of paper and canvases (“Like Japan,” Ringo says by way of explanation) and they paint and chat about nothing for hours, almost every day after that, tea gone cold in their cups. They lie on their stomachs like children, or curl protectively over the kitchen table, or post the paper on an easel and stand pensively in front of it like an old-fashioned portrait artist. They lay them out on the floor to dry and leave them there, mostly, although Ringo picks out one or two actually good ones and puts them up in nice frames. The paintings on the floor become so numerous that they create a sort of maze one has to follow in order to avoid stepping on them, and Paul considers that its own art piece, in a way. A maze with no defined center or concrete path to be followed; there’s got to be a metaphor in there somewhere, only he’s too tired most of the time to think about it very hard. John could probably make a song out of it. The swirled colors, the half-hidden faces, the dark muddy blotches where one of them used too much brown—<em>yeah,</em> Paul thinks. If anyone could make a song out of this mess, John could.</p><p>On the third day, weak afternoon sun streaming over the fresh paint, Paul sits back on his heels and surveys their work. One of Ringo’s new ones catches his eye; a lovely red heart settled comfortably under a wide rainbow. Four stars are clustered in one corner, orange, pink, blue, and green: the colors of their old Sgt. Pepper uniforms. Unexpectedly, Paul’s eyes begin to sting. It hits him with great force that he has been taking Ringo’s quiet presence utterly for granted. Unbidden, the words fall from his lips, cracking the calm silence that had fallen over the house wide open: “I don’t blame you, you know.”</p><p>“What for?” Ringo asks, still concentrating on his brushstrokes.</p><p>“For taking their side.”</p><p>Ringo’s brush pauses. “Oh, you forgive me, is that it?” he says in a low voice tinged with bitterness.</p><p>Paul is stricken. “No, no, I. No, Rich, that’s… It came out wrong.” Ringo touches brush to paper again, a tacit gesture to Paul that he’s allowed to continue. Paul swallows. He has to get this out, can’t believe how stupid he’s been for pushing such a patient, lovely friend away for so long. “What I meant was, I was dead horrible to you. Was to the others as well, but… You’d not done anything to deserve it. You’re… you’re the best drummer in the world, you know.” He raises his hands in front of him, beseeching. Paul has always been able to talk a little more openly with Ringo; perhaps as a function of being so close to death himself as a child, Ringo always seemed a little less guarded than the rest of them had. He suspected that George and John felt the same comfort and openness with Ringo; he radiated it, made other people at ease and safe just by existing in proximity. There is less artifice with him, and therefore Paul feels less of a need to construct artifice around himself. As a result, though, the sting of his own betrayal of Ringo is that much sharper.</p><p>“God,” he says quietly, staring at the rainbow painting. Staring at the four colored stars crowded together. “I’m sorry. I’d take it all back if I could.”</p><p>Ringo has been painting slowly, carefully, through Paul’s words, clearly listening and trying to weigh them for what they’re worth. Paul loves this about him; when you say something real to Ringo, you can be sure it will be safe and cared for and seriously considered. After a moment, he sits up and sticks the brush in the water cup they’ve been sharing.</p><p>“I know you would,” Ringo says slowly. “So would I.”</p><p>“You don’t have to forgive me, or… anything,” Paul murmurs. “Just…” He runs out of steam, suddenly tired beyond measure.</p><p>“Paul.” His tone makes Paul look up; Ringo’s ocean blue eyes are glassy. “I do love you, you know,” he says softly. “Of course I forgive you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>George visits while Ringo is over, four days after Paul gets home from the hospital; sensing that George may want to talk, Ringo excuses himself to the kitchen to make a call. George apologizes for not coming over sooner; he had been in Liverpool, looking after his father, both of them still in mourning for George’s mother, who had died only a couple of months ago. Paul excoriates himself silently for causing George even more pain in this horrible time.</p><p>Paul knows George will not be able to leave it alone, like Ringo can. He catches George glancing at the bandages that are still wrapped around both arms; he pretends not to be doing it, and for a few minutes Paul lets him get away with it. </p><p>“Listen, Paul,” George says quietly, setting his teacup on the saucer. “John says he wants to come over, and I said I’d—”</p><p>He halts abruptly; Paul, utterly unable to deal with the subject of John and needing George to stop talking about him, has begun to roll up his sleeves. He peels the bandages off of one wrist, then the other, and displays the injuries. George, previously transfixed by Paul’s movements, looks away fast, and Paul says, “It’s all right. I saw you looking.”</p><p>George swallows and reaches a hand out. He touches the left one, the shallower one, runs a trembling finger over the stitches. Paul thinks, <em>This is my baby brother George,</em> and remembers them traipsing around Liverpool together, hitching rides and camping out on the beach; he remembers George’s skinny face and big hair and how small and raw he looked when he played something new on his guitar and watched Paul’s expression for the approval he needed, how pleased he was when he got it.</p><p>“Does it hurt?” George asked, snatching his hand away.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>It does. They ache the most at night, when Paul rolls onto his side. One doctor said he’d gone so deep it almost severed the artery in his right arm (done with his dominant left hand, naturally). He was incredibly lucky Mal found him when he did, they’d said, or else Mal would have walked into a room with a corpse. He feels cursed instead. </p><p>“Was it because of us?” George’s dark eyes turn bloodshot. He looks down, trying to hide. </p><p>Paul sighs. “Can’t answer that. I dunno. Maybe.” He stops for a moment, then: “No. No. There’s more to it than that. We… I think we all poisoned it… In our own ways.”</p><p>In those long months alone in Cavendish, he had been depressed, barely functional; he’d thought about ending it but knew he’d never have the nerve. It was a thought he would indulge in like a warm bath, something to be considered seriously but never with intent. He would walk right up to the proverbial ledge and sit, staring over the cliff, for long stretches. With the recording session it had been different, or perhaps just a different endpoint than he’d imagined; it wasn’t about nerve, in the end. It was about animal instinct. You just needed a momentary impulse to tip you over. <em>L’appel du vide,</em> as the French phrase supposedly went. The impulse to break free of the trap.</p><p>That thought frightened him more than anything. He hadn’t known himself to be capable of impulses so destructive and therefore could not predict whether he’d be subject to them again.</p><p>“We had to,” George says, repeating his halfhearted plea from before.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Paul hasn’t seen George cry for years, not since Stu’s death, maybe. It makes him look so young. He’s shaved the beard but kept his mustache and long hair, tied it back low. “I know you did,” Paul says again, quieter.</p><p>“Klein made us th—he told us, he twisted us all up” (<em>filled your heads with notions, seemingly,</em> Paul thinks fleetingly) “thinking about deadlines and that and we panicked, you know, and he came up with it but we didn’t <em>know</em> it was that bad, you know, we should’ve…”</p><p>“—known better with a girl like me?” Paul tries out an encouraging smile, but it feels brittle and George’s expression crumples even more. He hides his face behind one hand for a long moment.</p><p>“I’m supposed to be okay with it, you know,” he says to the floor. Still hiding from Paul, his voice in ruins. He sounds like a bombed-out building, totally hollow and crumbled. “Death and getting to Nirvana and that. The art of dying, you know.”</p><p>“I love that song,” Paul says.</p><p>George is so distraught he doesn’t even seem annoyed at the compliment; he seems to have barely heard it at all. “I don’t know why I… Paul…”</p><p>“I know.” He waits a moment while George gets himself under control. George wipes his face with the back of his hand, and the move reminds Paul so strongly of a child in distress that his heart clenches painfully. “Georgie, I’m not dead,” he says softly. He’d pushed it with the song compliment, and now he’s really strung out on a limb with the nickname, testing his boundaries.</p><p>Again, George lets it pass. <em>All things must,</em> Paul supposes. “I know, but you <em>could</em> have been,” he insists. <em>So young,</em> Paul thinks, they're all still so young. There’s a strange doubling effect happening here, the George that he was as a teenager overlaid on top of his older body. Allowing nicknames, dwelling on could’ves and should’ves. Paul feels an almost overpowering urge to join George on the couch and tuck him into his side, but he’s sure that <em>would</em> cross the boundary of what’s allowed.</p><p>Paul rests his head on one fist. They sit with this unfathomable gulf between them, both guilty of horrors they hadn’t understood and both unable to atone. His wrists ache.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The days shorten as October settles in the way it often does in London, with enough gloom and haze to make you half-believe in Hell. Mal visits once, briefly, and spends most of the visit clearly tongue tied and unable to settle. He does hug Paul fiercely before leaving, though, enveloping Paul with his broad strong arms, and it makes Paul feel loved. Mike stops by with Jim a few times as well; they bring over groceries and chat about the family, like it’s a normal visit. Mike shows him wild newspaper headlines like <em>Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney Involved In Head-On Collision, Rumours Say</em> and <em>Drunk Driving A Likely Explanation For Collision with Errant Beatle</em> and the best one, <em>Crash Course In Beatledom.</em> Apparently, Mike tells him, because they’ve kept everything so in-house and told reporters fuck-all (“Not even Neil knows,” Mike confides, “He’s dying to see you, everybody is, but we thought it best to keep the circle small for now”), the papers have been going a bit barmy with speculation. Some of the less reputable rags have even brought back that Paul-is-dead nonsense; Mike’s nose scrunches with distaste when he relays that, but Paul, strangely, doesn’t mind it this time. They’re less wrong than they were before, anyway.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>One day, just a week after getting home from the hospital, Ringo is late. This in and of itself is not an unusual phenomenon, but it worries Paul all the same, for some reason. He sits at the kitchen table and watches Ringo’s tea go cold for nearly forty-five minutes before the doorbell rings. Far from the relief he expected to feel at the sound, though, the tension in his body ratchets up as he moves toward the door, and when he opens it, he understands with a flash why Ringo did not come: John is on the stoop.</p><p>“I knew it was you,” Paul blurts out.</p><p>John raises an eyebrow. “Did you?”</p><p>Paul nods. “I felt it.” He moves aside and John steps over the threshold, brushing a spangling of rain from his hair.</p><p>Paul does not ask where Yoko is, but the questions hangs between them like a black curtain until John gives in and says, “Yoko sends her love” (<em>I’ll bet she does,</em> Paul thinks bitterly) “but she had a show she couldn’t walk out on.”</p><p>Paul considers his next words carefully so as not to offend. “I didn’t know she did shows on her own nowadays.”</p><p>“She doesn’t.”</p><p>Paul looks up and meets John’s stare. The enormity of those two words, the meaning behind them, nearly bowls Paul over. <em>I walked out on a show with my wife for you,</em> John says with his eyes, <em>and you’d better appreciate it, bastard.</em></p><p><em>I do,</em> Paul tries to say back.</p><p>“Tea?” Paul says out loud. John nods, so they go to the kitchen. Paul reaches for the tea kettle to make a fresh pot but stops halfway through the motion. <em>Oh, fuck it.</em> He opens the cabinet above the stove instead and pulls down a nearly-full bottle of Scotch. He pours two generous glasses and hands one to John, whose eyes widen slightly. Paul says nothing but holds his gaze: a challenge. John meets him stare for stare. Without breaking eye contact, they clink glasses and drink.</p><p>“Not like the cuppas at Auntie Mimi’s, is it,” John mutters, mostly to himself. Paul smirks. Grabbing the bottle by the neck, he takes his drink out to the front room, and John follows close behind, matching him step for step the way he used to walk sometimes, as though molded to the back of Paul, his legs bending and straightening in perfect synchronization with Paul’s. They sit on opposite ends of the sofa, Paul watching the telly, John watching Paul.</p><p>Paul finishes his drink and pours himself another. Seeing this, John swallows the last vestiges of his and motions for the bottle. “Give us another, lad.” Paul hands the bottle over.</p><p>John won’t stop staring. Paul knows what he’s doing, knows that John wants him to turn and face him so they can talk without talking. It feels like the <em>Get Back</em> sessions all over again: John alternately staring him down from across the room and ignoring him completely. They never seemed able to connect; they were always looking at each other at different times. Now, Paul is just too tired. <em>If John wants to talk,</em> Paul thinks, <em>he’s going to have to actually use his vocal chords this time.</em></p><p>Four generous glasses each later, things start to look rather sideways. At the same moment, without speaking, John and Paul slide to the floor and lie flat on their backs. The tv talks quietly in the background, lovely and muted. The paintings that Paul and Ringo have been doing crackle and slide under their bodies; neither one cares that the maze is being ruined. They lie perpendicular to one another, pointing to each other in a right angle. Their heads are almost touching.</p><p>After their backs have settled on the flat hardwood, John says suddenly, “If you’d died I would’ve killed myself too.” He sounds stone cold sober, the words spoken with absolute conviction, no need to overemphasize or oversell it. They have a ring of actual truth, not just the true-in-the-moment emotions that John is often subject to. Paul stretches his neck back to look at John, but the angle is such that he can only see a mess of hair and John’s long nose.</p><p>“And leave Yoko and Kyoko?” Paul says steadily. This is the only way they can talk about such things, by pretending that they aren’t. Every once in a while, they used to have these types of conversations, seeing who could say the deepest most awful thing in their soul with a straight face and a hard stare. Emotional chicken. </p><p>“Yoko can take care of herself,” John replies. “She was married before, she could be married again. Besides…” He sighs deep and long, windmilling his arms over the paintings like he’s making a snow angel. “I don’t think she loves me. Just the idea of me she has stuck in her mind, you know. Perhaps that’s how most people really are, though. I’ve only noticed it with her.” There is a long silence where Paul contemplates this new reality he has found himself in, a reality in which one dead Beatle would not have meant just that; it would have meant <em>two</em> dead Beatles, the devastation repeated. He wonders what George and Ringo would have done, what the <em>press</em> would have done with that. A modern Shakespearean tragedy played out in the real world. Paul shudders thinking how close they came to it. He should buy Mal some flowers.</p><p>“And I could never leave you to cross the Styx on your own,” John adds. His tone is flat; still playing chicken with him, always challenging and competing. It lights a dim spark in Paul, something he’d thought long dead.</p><p>“How would you do it?” Paul asks in the same tone. </p><p>“Overdose would be easiest, I think. But my tolerance is high now, it would take, I don’t even know how much.”</p><p>“How much did you normally take?”</p><p>There’s a ruffle of paper that Paul assumes is John shrugging. “Dunno, really. Was never good with weights and measures. Yoko usually did it for me, you know. Don’t like needles too much.”</p><p>Quiet for a while. Someone on the telly talks in a bright artificial voice to a captive audience about a new brand of laundry detergent, guaranteed to remove the toughest of stains. Then John turns onto his stomach, props his chin in his hands, and stares down at Paul. “Macca?” he says softly, signaling the end of the game. “What are you gonna do?”</p><p>It hurts to meet his eyes right now, but Paul forces himself to look. “Dunno. What do you mean?”</p><p>“With Klein.”</p><p>“Suppose I’ll have to sign, won’t I. Can’t sue anymore. You won.”</p><p>John doesn’t look triumphant, or pleased. He looks down at Paul with a deep frown instead, like he’s disappointed.</p><p>Paul almost laughs. He tosses loose drunk hands in the air in exasperation. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he whispers. He’d meant for it to come out more forcefully, but his throat is closing up tight.</p><p>“Can I play you something?” John asks abruptly. “Just some scraps I’ve been reworking.” Nervous now, a bit jittery in a drunken sort of way.</p><p>“I’ve got no guitars,” Paul mutters, rubbing his hands down his face and through his hair. “Smashed them all, didn’t I.”</p><p>“Still got a piano, haven’t ya?” Paul nods.</p><p>John gets up first and stretches out his hand, and without thinking Paul takes it. He remembers just a second too late; when John hauls Paul to standing, the pain is excruciating. The strain pulls hard on the stitches and Paul gasps so sharply that John lets go as though scalded. Not quite balanced yet, Paul stumbles backward, managing to land basically seated on the couch.</p><p>“Sorry,” John gasps. He seems unable to decide whether he wants to reach out and touch or run screaming out of the room; the result is several awkward flutter-steps toward Paul, then away. “I’m sorry, God, I wasn’t thinking, oh Paulie—”</p><p>“Shut up!” Paul barks. He cradles his wrist; one of the stitches must have pulled out or popped. A small spot of blood seeps through the bandage now, thankfully not too much or too quickly, but he knows he’ll have to go back to the hospital to get it restitched in the morning. He takes a deep steadying breath. “It’s all right, John. Just a pulled stitch. I wasn’t thinking either.” John chews on his lip, arms wrapped around his middle. He follows Paul to the washroom, even offers to re-bandage the wound when he sees Paul having trouble doing it with just one hand. John’s medical skills are nonexistent and his hands are shaking, the wrapping far too loose in his excessive caution and gentleness, but Paul appreciates the effort.</p><p>“Sorry,” John says again, weakly, as he tapes the bandage down.</p><p>“Me too,” Paul murmurs.</p><p>“Do they hurt ya?”</p><p>Paul hesitates for a moment, reliving the moment George asked the same question. He decides on the truth now: “All the time.”</p><p>They go to the side room. John pulls out the bench and sits down, leaving a space for Paul; Paul eyes it for a moment before choosing the sofa. John swallows and nods once, jerkily, as if to say <em>fair enough.</em></p><p>John’s hands linger over the keys for a moment. He stops, shakes them out, repositions. Feeling generous, Paul lets his hesitation pass; they haven’t played exclusively for each other in over two years. His first chords are tentative winged things, barely there. Nevertheless, Paul recognizes them: Child of Nature, an ethereal India song of John’s. He remembers John singing it at George’s house when they returned, sun-brown and fundamentally changed—higher than he normally sang for a sustained amount of time and a little warbly.</p><p>Drunken fingers fumble a little over the keys. He starts to sing, but when he sings the lyrics are different. It’s the same angelic register that John rarely bothered to try for, only now he is singing about the past and losing control. <em>I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore…</em> Chewing on a thumbnail, Paul listens as John apologizes the only way he can.</p><p><em>I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry.</em> John’s voice wobbles and cracks. The lyrics are raw and utterly plain-spoken, in that way John could get when he wasn’t busy up his own arse obscuring his feelings with nonsense phrases and bizarre images. No artifice in these lyrics, no <em>flat-top grooving up slowly,</em> no wink-wink-nudge-nudge. They lock gazes over the piano briefly.</p><p>The thing is, Paul knows John <em>did</em> mean to hurt him. Repeatedly, with great malice aforethought. Paul knows this because Paul did exactly the same thing to John, had to match him hurt for hurt just like he had to match John on everything else, until no one could remember who started which fight and all that mattered was getting in the last barbed word. A lot of those words are going to be very hard to let go, for both of them.</p><p>Still. It means something that John is willing to reach for him.</p><p>Paul moves while he is still playing and sits down on the piano bench, in the space John had left for him. John has repeated the chorus a couple of times, so Paul knows the lyrics well enough to join in. Eyes on the keys and John’s shaky hands, they sing together, to one another. In spite of everything, all the awful things between them, Paul has never gotten tired of the way their voices are perfect for each other. They could not be more well matched if God himself had done the matchmaking.</p><p>John plays the last chords as softly as the piano will allow and the notes fade fast.</p><p>“Well?” John rasps.</p><p>Paul swallows. “Real knockout, that,” he says, any joviality stripped by the fact that he can’t speak above a whisper.</p><p>“Will you be all right?”</p><p>Paul exhales sharply, almost a laugh. “I dunno what to say.”</p><p>“No, I mean… I didn’t mean now, and not about the song either, I just…” John takes a deep breath. “When Mal called us he thought you were dead. You can’t even imagine, you know. For a while I thought I was dead too. And then they said you’d made it through and I realized all the things I thought I’d never be able to say, I get to say them now. Except when I see you it’s the same thing as it was before, everything comes out twisted or not at all, you know.” He tugs on his ear nervously. “You’ve got to promise you’ll not do it again.”</p><p>“John…”</p><p>“No, I <em>mean</em> it, you know. I can’t take it, I can’t. And Georgie and Ringo can’t either, nor your dad.” John turns his whole body toward Paul, and Paul, pinned down by the intensity of focus, can do nothing but stare back.</p><p>The memory of doing this with him in 67, pouring themselves into each other through their eyes while tripping, floods back, and Paul lets himself get lost for a moment. The heightened awareness of one another is a ghost of what it used to be, and only partially because they aren’t sailing on the good ship lysergic this time, but they both sink into it anyway, a loosening of muscle, a slight angling of bodies toward one another. Eventually they’ve poured so much of themselves into the other that Paul discovers he’s looking at himself. He watches himself in the mirror of John’s eyes. His reflection looks balefully back, then reaches into his own chest and pulls out a seething, writhing black mass that spill over his hands in messy, oily clumps.</p><p>“Hey,” John breathes, sounding both in awe and like he doesn’t want to spook Paul. The Paul in John’s eyes puts the mess back inside his chest and glares out as if to say, <em>Live with it.</em></p><p>There must be a mirror John in Paul’s eyes too, because John’s eyebrows go up a fraction. “Did you see that?” he whispers; he motions to his chest, miming pulling something out of it. His heart pounding painfully, Paul nods. If John saw it too, if John has the same black devastation in him, maybe he’s not alone. Maybe they <em>can</em> live with it.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Johnny.” The words are barely there, so soft as to be almost entirely breath. It takes so much effort to get them out; they travel from his heart up his throat, and by the time they reach his mouth he’s almost completely out of energy.</p><p>John matches his volume. It feels like if they speak any louder the windows will shatter. “What for, luv?”</p><p>Paul shakes his head, spent. He feels inside out and totally exposed. “All of it.”</p><p>“Aye,” John whispers. “And me.” Finally, finally, they both close their eyes, and Paul has himself back, all contained and singular. John tips his forehead and presses it against Paul’s, then moves in closer and kisses Paul, once on the lips, once on the forehead. Paul opens his eyes and finally allows the tears to fall; when he looks up, John is crying too.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the first week of November, Allen Klein takes the four of them and Yoko out for supper before the signing ceremony. Paul has gotten his stitches out, and the new pink skin stretches shiny and raised along the lengths of his arms. They don’t quite match, the left scar a little shorter and more crooked than the right one. Bizarrely, the unevenness sticks in Paul’s mind and drives him a bit crazy, but his long sleeves and the fact that someone he so despises is paying for his dinner crowds out the strange thought nicely. </p><p>Paul picks at his food, listless and bored. When he first met up with them, Klein had been rude in that jovial, jostling way that normally made Paul want to run for the hills or take a bath. “Ayup, Paul?” he’d said, doing some impression that was too mangled to place, “How’s them golden hands healing?”</p><p>“Christ, a little louder, Allen, don’t think they heard you in Manchester,” Ringo’d muttered uncomfortably. Paul had recognized the tone of Klein’s voice and knew it was meant to needle him, but he’d discovered he was utterly immune to it now.</p><p>“How are Mick and Keith then?” he’d responded. Klein’s eyes had narrowed, but before he could retort Yoko had jumped in with her high-pitched lilt and engaged him in some inane talk or other. Klein had been basically ignoring him since, and that suits them both just fine. Paul barely talks at all; each time someone speaks to him he struggles to remember how to construct a sentence and then how to get it out. He can feel John staring at him from across the table, clearly expecting Paul to jump into a conversation; if not with Klein, at least with George or Ringo or their waitress, who is truly lovely in an Irish ginger sort of way. Each time Paul does not fill a silence, John glares harder, the low restaurant lights glinting bright off of his glasses.</p><p>Eventually, it becomes too much. Paul breaks first. “<em>What,</em> John?” he snaps, accidentally cutting Klein off mid-word. George freezes; his fork trembles comically halfway to his open mouth.</p><p>“You know what,” John retorts angrily.</p><p>“I <em>don’t.</em>”</p><p>Four pairs of eyes ping-pong between them. “Right then,” John mutters. He throws his napkin onto the table. “Outside, now.” John and Paul push back their chairs. Yoko starts to stand up as well, but John halts her with a sharp “Stay there” and she sits back down, thin-lipped, eyes tight.</p><p>Paul follows him to the dirty alley behind the restaurant.</p><p>“The fuck is the matter with you?” John explodes the second the door latches closed.</p><p>Paul actually laughs at that. He pulls out a couple of cigs and lights them up at the same time. John takes one and sticks it between his lips, sucking down smoke like air.</p><p>“Well?” John demands, never able to let a thing go once he’d got teeth into it. “Didn’t use that knife on your voice box too, did ya?”</p><p>Paul looks at him coolly, and John is instantly cowed, mumbling, “Fuck, sorry,” and stepping back a few inches to lean his head back against the grimy brick. Paul can feel him simmering. He counts down the seconds in his head, <em>three, two, one,</em> and John explodes again right on cue. “But would it kill you to be fucking civil though?”</p><p>“Trapped wild animals don’t domesticate on your whim, John,” Paul says wearily. “You never could figure that out.” Before John can process that, Paul turns to him. “Look, I’ll sign the bleeding contract. I’ll do all the song and dance he wants. I’ll stand on me head on the street corner if it’ll make him happy. But I’ll not pretend to enjoy it.”</p><p>“Used to be good at that, pretending,” John snaps, intending to wound, but the aim is wild. The barb sails past Paul and he’s able to look at it objectively. John is right; Paul <em>was</em> good at that. He took pride in it. It pleased him that people liked him, even if he didn’t necessarily like them. Somewhere along the way he’d lost the habit of that charm; perhaps it had been the drink, or the drugs, or his friends falling away before his eyes, but even so he’d never stopped caring what people thought of him. <em>Until now,</em> he supposes. It’s a tiny act of rebellion within the structure of the cage Klein is trapping them in. He will dance for Klein but he will not smile.</p><p>“You could stand to at least look at—the man,” John sneers. The little pause before the last two words catches in Paul’s brain; he’d been about to say <em>me</em> and shifted gears at the last second. Paul looks at him, but out of the corner of his eye, not full-on. The look seems to enrage John even more and he kicks the wall hard enough to bend and scuff up the tip of his very nice shoe. The moment at Cavendish feels impossibly far away now, that black void in Paul’s chest heavier and more tangled. The next three years spread out in front of him as bleak as a London winter. He’s exhausted just thinking about it.</p><p>“Let’s go back in,” Paul says flatly. He flicks his cig away, embers still burning at the end. “Freezing out here.”</p><p>“<em>Paul,</em>” John snarls, but Paul has already opened the door and walked back inside, and John makes a frustrated, inarticulate noise in his throat and follows.</p><p>“Hey, there they are!” Klein booms expansively when he sees them weaving toward the table; a couple of people at neighboring tables jump at the volume of his voice. “Give him a good one, didja?” He winks at John while making a crude tossing-off hand gesture.</p><p>Instead of laughing cruelly along with Klein, as Paul expects, John growls, “Stuff a sock in it, Allen.” George and Ringo shift uncomfortably in their chairs and shoot furtive inscrutable glances at each other. Yoko alone remains serene.</p><p>Klein raises an eyebrow, unruffled. “Tough crowd,” he chuckles, and raises a hand to call for the check.</p><p>They take cabs to Abbey Road. Paul climbs into the first one, followed by Klein and Yoko; shockingly, John does not follow and decides to go with Ringo and George. Paul wonders if there isn’t a God after all, laughing behind the scenes as he tests Paul. Glancing out the window as the cab pulls away, Paul catches a quick glimpse of the three of them still standing on the curbside, clearly deep into some kind of intense conversation.</p><p>The cab ride is agonizing but blessedly short. Paul has never been so grateful for Yoko’s ability to fill a silence whenever she wants to; she chatters Klein’s ear off about heaven knows what and Paul stares blankly out the window, mesmerized by the uniform grey of the city. Most of the leaves have fallen off of the trees by now, and they stick to the ground in sodden brown clumps. Paul’s limbs feel as heavy as the bare tree branches, bowed and drooping and dead.</p><p>The three of them wait in the front lobby for a few minutes, watching through the glass, before the other cab drives up. George gets out first, mouth moving rapidly; Ringo exits next, then John, who is gesturing with his hands, too quick for Paul to understand. They stop arguing when they reach the front steps, but all of them still look riled and distracted when they walk inside, barely acknowledging Klein when he greets them. Yoko steps up to John, puts a hand on his back and looks up quizzically at him, but he only wraps his arm around her shoulders seemingly as an afterthought. There’s a strange energy suffusing the group as they walk to the board room together; it had been building during supper but now it buzzes strangely between all of them, electricity zapping between lightning rods. Klein acts unaffected, still talking in his grating cowboy voice to anyone and everyone about <em>how much money they’re all about to make, so much you’ll all be rolling in it like the kings you are, you’ll see,</em> but he’s not stupid; he can feel it too.</p><p>George stops walking first. They’re about five meters from the door and he stops, stares at the floor with his brows furrowed. One by one, they all look back, confused.</p><p>“George, all right?” Paul says.</p><p>George looks up at him. Paul recognizes the look instantly. George can be a slow talker; he thinks about things differently than the rest of them, he’s said, in concepts and three-dimensional shapes, and it can take time to whisk the images into words. Most of the time the four of them didn’t need words to understand, but Paul has seen George thinking like this before, in front of other people. This is his jumbled look, the head-tilting effort of making his thoughts comprehensible to outsiders.</p><p>Klein has no patience for it. “Come on, boys,” he insists, attempting to herd them along, “almost there, just a few more steps, that’s a good lad.” No one listens.</p><p>Finally, George speaks. “I don’t want to,” he mutters.</p><p>“What?” Klein says sharply.</p><p>George looks at him, supplicating. “Look, can’t it wait? Something feels… I dunno. We can sign later, though, yeah? Next week or something?”</p><p>
  <em>Is this what they were talking about so intensely?</em> Paul wonders. That odd energy buzzes even stronger now; it bounces around them, creating invisible static so thick Paul has a hard time breathing through it.</p><p>Klein rolls his eyes and walks to the door, opens it, ushers them all inside. Reluctantly, they follow, even George, who looks at Paul and shakes his head once. Paul looks back, asking <em>What’s going on?</em> with his eyes. George doesn’t answer; instead he steps up to John and glares at him. John looks conflicted, a little frightened. Paul glances at Ringo, who is watching George and John with quiet intensity, nodding slightly as if to say <em>Yes, that’s it, go on.</em></p><p>“All right, boys,” Klein says irritably. “I’ve waited long enough to get Paul to bend over, let’s get on with it, shall we.”</p><p>George whirls around, murder in his eyes. “He bloody tried to kill himself because of your daft idea,” he growls. “The least you could do is give us some time—“</p><p>“George—” Paul starts.</p><p>“Good thing he’s not as good at suicide as he is at music, then, huh?” Klein says with flip nonchalance, and suddenly the energy <em>shifts</em> with a heavy, almost audible <em>clunk.</em> All the air is sucked out of the room in an instant. Paul’s blood sings with fury, but it’s not his; it’s George’s, and Ringo’s, and John’s. Not <em>at</em> him this time, but on his behalf.</p><p>In a flash, John steps away from Yoko and punches Klein full in the face. He’s noodle-armed, always has been, but he’s got good aim and lots of rage, and the punch breaks Klein’s nose with an incredibly satisfying crunch. Time slows to a crawl and then suddenly snaps forward as everyone starts to move at once. George strides long-legged toward the door and rips it open, charging out like an angry rhino. Klein falls back into a chair, holding his nose and yelling. Yoko rushes toward him, sleeve out to stem the blood gushing down his chin. Ringo puts one hand on Paul’s back and pushes him out the door, grabbing John by the arm with his other hand and yanking him along as he shouts at Klein’s prone form.</p><p>“You’re fired,” John spits with finality, and viciously kicks the door shut behind him.</p><p>Total silence except for the scuffling of their boots as they march out. Paul could recognize them with his eyes closed, in his sleep, a million miles away, just by their footsteps. John, heavy and dragging, slightly uneven. George, lighter and quicker, balanced forward. Ringo, even-tempo-ed thumps like his drums. George bursts through the front doors first, a gust of chilly autumn wind hitting them like a slap in the face.</p><p>“You’re all mad,” Paul says faintly.</p><p>“He had no right to speak of you like that,” George thunders, glaring at the ground.</p><p>“He doesn’t deserve to be in the same room with us,” John agrees darkly, and Paul’s chest warms when he realizes that <em>us</em> includes <em>him</em> again.</p><p>“But what about…” Halfway through the sentence, Paul discovers he has nothing to say. He stops on the curb, fumbles through his pockets and finds his cigs; with shaking hands he lights one for each of them.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> him,” Ringo says, vehement like Paul has never seen before. “Fuck him and his fucking promises. It’s all shite.” He sucks on his cig, shaking his head. “You were right about him, Paul,” he says, glaring back at the front doors of Abbey Road. “You were a cunt about it, but you were right. He’s not fit.”</p><p>“We’ll find someone else,” John says. “We don’t need him.” He’s confident, completely in charge, just as he used to be in the early days when they were taking off. Paul half expects him to break into his John Wayne impression and shout, <em>Where are we going, boys?</em> But he doesn’t. Instead he smiles crookedly at Paul, then crosses his eyes and sticks his tongue out. It shocks Paul into a laugh, making him choke on his cigarette smoke. John pounds him on the back.</p><p>“Well, what now?” Paul asks, voice rusty with carcinogens and maybe love.</p><p>No one has time to answer, because at that very moment Klein shoves through the door, shouting incoherently, waving a bloody fist around.</p><p><em>“Run!”</em> John screams with glee. Something <em>zings</em> through Paul, and it feels like the first few years on stage together, early days, playing I Wanna Hold Your Hand, that intangible vibration tuning all of them to exactly the same frequency. <em>Oh you, got that Somethin.</em></p><p>They all take off running together. The world stretches outward and upward in front of them, and freedom tastes sweeter than life.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title is from the poem <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/poetry-month-what-resembles-the-grave-but-isnt/">What Resembles The Grave But Isn't</a> by Anne Boyer, which is a beautiful poem I think about often.</p><p>Timeline notes: this is meant to take place in and around October/early November 1970. I am aware that All Things Must Pass didn't come out until late November, but we're just gonna pretend it came out a couple of months earlier so that Paul could have heard The Art Of Dying and had an opinion on it. Also I do not know the timeline of John and Yoko's heroin detox period so for the purposes of this fic we're assuming they were at least heroin-sober by the beginning of October 1970.</p><p>I don't know the layout of Cavendish.</p><p>I've probably gotten some things wrong about how the legal bs worked around this time and I've made my peace with that.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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